Olympus Evolt E-420 digital camera
resource

Contact & Questions

This online resource is under construction. If you have
new
information please send me
an email or leave a message
in
the
form below. If you have very specific
questions
about the Olympus E-420, I'd suggest that you put them in the

Will you help me ?

I can't have my eyes everywhere and if you are aware of any information
specific to the Olympus E420 which isn't yet available here, or if
you'd like to leave your own user report, you can send it to me here.
Just leave
a notice in the message box below (leave name and email adress if
you'd like me to reply to you):

RAW file format

Dave Coffin is listing on his dcraw page
every RAW image processing software which either is using his decoder
or
use the decoder as documentation (scroll down to "Other Raw Photo
Decoders").

Some of these packages are free, some are not.

I have tried out a number of these packages and in my opinion the
Adobe Photoshop one delivers the best performance in terms of image
quality, user interface and processing speed (with some decoders when
you make a change to the parameters you have to wait for a while until
you see the change in the preview window).

If you use Photoshop you will need CS3 or later versions, because
CS2 (or earlier versions) cannot import the camera raw file filters
needed for the Olympus E420 RAWs.

Olympus has released a codec
for Windows Vista.
The codec is a piece of software running under Windows Vista with which
Vista can import and display RAW images of all Olympus DSLRs.

Chromatic
aberrations / Purple fringing

To remove chromatic aberrations you can process the RAW image
with the Adobe Photohop RAW plugin.

To remove chromatic aberrations with
an image editor (desaturation of the magentas):

It is very simple to remove chromatic
aberrations from an image. Simply use a photo editor and set the
saturation
level of magenta (also green where this makes sense) to the minimum. In
some images you might have to set the saturation level of red to the
minimum.
It might also make sense to limit the processing to the affected area
(i.e.
select the affected image area and only process that).

Accessories

The FP-1 Power Flash grip is designed for use with the FL-50
high-voltage pack and can be used in combination with the flash unit's
built-in power supply to provide fast flash charging for an extended
number of shots. The head is can be rotated by 180° for increased
versatility.

Here are two tests of the Zuiko
Digital 7-14 mm F4 lens, one
performed by Andrzej Wrotniak and one by John Foster.
The one by Andrzej Wrotniak is a bit more scientific, with physics
formulas and resolution charts, while the one of John Foster is more
from a user perspective and contains many sample images.

External
flash

The Olympus E420 has a standard flash hotshoe and can
take standard
external flashes (among others the FL-20, FL-36 and FL-50).

Try out the Metz flash units - cheap and reliable. Alternatively
try the FL-36 or other Olympus flash units.

Controlling
the Olympus E420 with a computer

Underwater
Photography

Olympus is currently not offering an underwater case specific to
the E-420, but the PT-E03
underwater housing for the E400 and E410 might fit. Policarbonate,
waterproof up to
40m, takes the FL-36 TTLflash with the PFL-01 & PFL-E01
flash housing. Five interchangeable lens ports allow the optional
use of the Olympus 14-45mm, 14-42mm, 11-22mm or 14-54mm, 7-14mm, 8mm
Fisheye and the 35mm as well as the 50mm Macro lens.

Olympus also offer several
lens ports needed to use the Zuiko lenses underwater. There are
lens ports for the 14-45, 14-54, 50mm, 7-14, 14-42 and for the E-14
teleconverter as well as other accessories needed when using the camera
underwater.

The site Digideep.com
is an online directory for digital underwater photography.

Exif
Image Viewer, by Michal Kowalski. This is the one I'm using.
Quoting
from his homepage:

"EXIF viewer is a simple image
viewer application for photos taken with digital cameras. It's capable
of reading EXIF information embedded in photos as well as little
thumbnail.
Because small thumbnail is already present in most photos displaying it
is really fast.EXIF viewer can also provide
detailed information about photos (shutter speed, aperture, etc.) and
conveniently
list them for comparison purposes.EXIF viewer also displays image
histogram. It also features copying/moving and deleting of selected
photos.
Single photograph can be displayed in separate window or in a full
screen
mode."

Exifer,
by Friedemann Schmidt. I'm using this one too. It can rewrite EXIF data
to images which lost it due to processing with a software package which
doesn't support EXIF. Quoting from his site:

"Exifer is a nearly free software
(you only should send me a postcard if you're using Exifer frequently)
with which you can manage the metadata (EXIF/IPTC) of pictures taken by
digital cameras. Because many image processing software destroys this
metadata
when saving such files, the idea was to create a backup of the metadata
before editing it in any software, and then, after that to restore it
back
into the processed file. With Exifer you can do this very easily. "

Panorama
shots

Personally I can recommend PTGUI
(which I have been using for years now): not free but an excellent
piece of software.